Look at Me
by Atila
Summary: Nita and Kit's daughter, Ruby, has been being messed with by the Powers since before she was born. Now that's she's finally a Wizard, strange things are happening - even for a wizard. I don't write Mary-Sues. You won't expect the ending. R&R.
1. Prologue

**Look at Me**

_By Atila_

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**A/N: I'm going to try to keep the author's notes in this story to a minimum but I thought it was a good idea to include one here. I've been sitting on this story for some time. While reading it, I want you to question the conclusions the main character draws about things, and how things appear. The fun part of this story is the illusions. Please read and review, I always enjoy feedback. Other than that I hope you like it. **

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**Prologue**

The little fetus moved inside her mother's womb. The Lone Power watched it was a curiosity that was almost a longing. He had never known what it was to be alive, to breathe the air and feel the ground beneath his feet. Feelings like that, senses like that, was a luxury that had always been denied the Powers that Be. He was no exception, rebel or not.

It had been several months since Nita Rodriguez had first found out she was Pregnant. This was the first time the Lone One had seen the little potentiality. At first, he was half of a mind to destroy the little thing. Her – he could see it _was_ a her – parents were Wizards, after all. The likelihood was high that this child would be also. Somehow, though, he couldn't bring himself to do it.  
That puzzled him. It wouldn't take much effort to destroy a child of this stage, especially for someone with as much power as he had at his disposal. He couldn't interpret the feeling that was gripping him. Well, he thought. If I can't kill her I may as well make her useful to me.

He touched the little life with a soft but forceful urge of intention. He could feel the power of her tiny life restructuring its self into something new. Now she really was a potentiality. A potentiality of power that, he was sure, he could use someday. Feeling satisfied, the Lone One departed for deep space. It was boring to stay any place too long.

******

Try to picture a world of water droplets, each sliding down a window pane. Some of them move slowly, others race each other to the end. Some of them collide with others, merging to form and endless stream of water. In a way, that's how my kind has always viewed human beings. Little drops of water that can do great good – or bring great ruin – from the tiny ways they impact the world.

Perhaps that is why we have always invested so much in your race. You may not know it, but we are always watching, nurturing, making sure you'll have the tools to succeed. Whether you use those tools is up to you. Every now and then we create you for specific purposes. You retain your free will. All we can do is watch and hope.

I cannot say what my Brother was thinking when he created Ruby. But he didn't know what we interfered with his creation. Or that he would like the changes we made, in the end.

******

Ruby Arianna Rodriguez was born on a calm midsummer's night. She was her parents' second child; her older brother, Daniel, had been born three years before. Ruby bore a strong resemblance to both of her parents. She had her father, Kit's, Spanish skin tone and her mother, Nita's, large brown eyes. Her dark hair wasn't a surprise: it was her heritage from both parents.

After birth her paternal Grandfather plucked a rosebud from the bouquet beside her mother's bed and placed it in her tiny fist. "See?" he said to the room full of family. "Now she can say the first thing she ever held was a rosebud." Ruby made to put the bud in her mouth. He took the tiny flower out of the infant's fist and let her hold his finger. She could suck on that without getting hurt. Ruby immediately started crying.


	2. Across the Great Oceans

**Look at Me**

_By Atila_

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**Chapter One – Across the Great Oceans**

_Twelve Years Later_

Ruby hugged her sweater more tightly around her thin frame. It was spring, and the days had already begun to grow sticky and hot. Nights, though, remained as cold as ever.

"Ruby, come on!" called her cousin, Jillian. Jill was a year and a half older than Ruby, and her Aunt Carmella's daughter. Jill was also a Wizard, something Ruby was infinitely jealous of.

Nita and Kit had made no effort to conceal their Wizardry from their children. This was partly because neither of them could lie, and partly because Nita's Aunt had recommended it and Nita's Aunt had experience.

"Where are we going?" Ruby called back. Although she and Jill had been good friends for a long time, lately they had been starting to grow apart. Ruby's Dad said it had something to do with growing up. Ruby thought it had something to do with Jill flaunting her Wizardry every chance she got.

"You'll see," Jill said mysteriously. She turned her back to walk ahead of Ruby, who rolled her eyes.

After a few minutes of silence in which Jill hummed and Ruby glowered, they reached the wharf where all the fishing boats were tied up along the dock. This wasn't a place children came often. It wasn't a place anyone came often if they could help it. The stench of gutted and rotting fish was so heavy on the air it was hard to breathe.

The bay was beautiful at this time though. It was sunset, and the sun was a dull blood red. It looked like it was melting into the ocean, turning it surprising shades of pink and gold.

Jill wasn't paying any attention to this. She had walked to the end of the docks where she was waiting, hands on hips. "Can't you move?"

Ruby's head jerked up. She'd gotten lost in the rippling colors the sun was painting the water. Quickly she ran to catch up with Jill.

"About time," Jill rolled her eyes. "Now I'm going to cast a spell. Don't move a muscle." Jill rummaged in her backpack and pulled out the wand she used for casting spells.

"Hey, hold on!" Ruby said quickly. Her mother would kill her if she wasn't at home in thirty minutes. It was nearly dark. "How long is this going to take?"

Jill cast her an annoyed glance. It was clear to Ruby that her cousin knew her worry and thought she was being a baby. "Not long, not long. Just don't move."

Ruby resigned herself and stood perfectly still. It took Jill a few minutes to finish whatever she was doing.

"There," Jill said. "You're waterproof and you can breathe underwater. Now we can go."

Ruby was about to insist that Jill tell her what they were doing but before she could get the words out her cousin dove into the murky harbor water. Gritting her teeth – this definitely wasn't the craziest thing her cousin had asked her to do – Ruby jumped in after her.

She sunk quickly beneath the surface. As she fell softly to the bottom she looked above herself, wondering what the upper world looked like from below. Tiger-striped ripples – that had to be the last of the sunset – danced across a sky that could have been a mirror.

Ruby glanced around herself and saw Jill a couple yards away, hanging stationary in the water. Ruby swum over. Jill held a finger to her lips and then mouthed a single word: wait. Ruby allowed herself to hang, stationary, in the water supported by Jill's wizardry. It was a strange feeling, feeling the come and go of the waves but not moving at all.

A large, dark, shape was emerging out of the gloom. Ruby recognized it immediately, partially from pictures she'd seen in schools and partially because her parents were friends with several of these creatures. It was a Humpback whale. As it got closer, Ruby realized that she didn't recognize this one.

Ruby looked questioningly at Jill. Since they had both known whales since they were born, this could hardly be what Jill had wanted to show her.

With a surge of discomfort Ruby heard Jill's voice echo through her mind. _This is Karaci. She's from a Pod of Humpbacks that are just off the coast right now. _

_I've met whales before, Jill, _Ruby thought back hard, hoping Jill would pick it up.

Jill rolled her eyes. _But have you ever _ridden_ one?_

The honest answer to this was no. Ruby's parents had always been strict about using magic on and for her. They wanted her to have as normal a child as possible, in spite of the fact that they kept going on errantry and their cat regularly spoke English and read the Newspaper.

Ruby began to feel excited. Riding a whale? She had always wanted to. _Would it be rude?_ She asked Jill. After all, she didn't know how she'd feel about some creature from another species wanting to ride _her. _

_Oh, she's fine with it. Actually, it was her idea. She's been wanting to show me some open ocean. And I asked if I could bring you. She seemed to really like the idea. _

The whale – Karaci – had stopped a few meters from where Jill and Ruby were. Ruby wished, with all her heart, that she was able to speak with the whale. But for some reason her mother and father had forbidden her to learn the Speech.

_So how about it? _Jill put her hands on her hips. Ruby struggled not to laugh; underwater, this looked extremely silly.

_Definitely_.

Jill swam around the back of her whale friend, motioning for Ruby to follow her. After a few minutes they were situated, Jill in front, Ruby behind clinging on to Jill's shoulders.

Jill said something to Karaci that Ruby could both understand and not understand at all. Then the whale started to move. Slowly at first, as they left the Harbor behind, and then faster.

For Ruby it was pure joy. Once they were out on the open ocean, the water became clearer, cleaner. Karaci dipped above the waves every now and then and the two girls marveled at how fast they were going.

A strange feeling was spreading, radiating from Ruby's heart. She could barely find the words of it. It was like a sudden bond had formed between her and the ocean, so strong it stunned her.

Then Ruby realized two things at once. Firstly, Karaci had stopped moving. Secondly, Jill was hitting her frantically on the arm. She was shocked to see the look of fear in Jill's eyes. All of a sudden it hit Ruby that in order for them to be out here at all right now, Jill would have to be doing work in the ocean. She wouldn't have known the whales otherwise.

I will not panic, she thought determinately to herself. She made an effort to relax, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. She had no magic. There was nothing she could do. _What is it?_ She thought hard at Jill.

_Water Demons, _Jill thought back at her. She sounded completely panicked.

Ruby was about to ask what exactly a water demon was – they'd never been in any of the underwater biology textbooks _she'd_ heard of – but at that moment a huge black shape darted out from the murky depths of the water reaching strange tentacles for the whale. Karaci darted forward suddenly, but Ruby wasn't ready for it. Her hands slipped from Jill's shoulders and she slid backward off the Whale's back and into the shadowy depths of the ocean.

Ruby floundered around in the water, turning desperately this way and that. The shape of the whale was out of sight. All the water around Ruby was black with depth and night. She could feel the water rippling around her, and it was more than just waves. _Things_ were moving out there, close. She felt as though she could feel the intensity of their regard scorching her mind with dark malice. If she looked closely she could see them like patches of darkness so intense it scorched her eyes.

_JILL!_ Ruby screamed inside her head as loud as she could. She was almost crying with fear. No answer came.

Is she too far away to hear me? Ruby wondered, panicked. Or is she unable to answer me because she's- But she couldn't complete the thought. It was too horrible.

The dark shapes in the water were getting closer. One of them brushed her side as it wound its way past her in the dark. Ruby screamed Jill's name in her mind again, but again no answer came. If there were air Ruby would have been screaming out loud. As it was, all she could do was cry out inside her mind. Something latched onto her leg, something sharp. It felt like teeth.

Strangely, as the teeth sank into her skin, Ruby realized she wasn't afraid anymore. It was the stupidest thing, she though. She'd been dying with fear moments before and now something bad had really happened so she wasn't afraid? It made no sense. She felt as though someone was watching over her. A few moments later, the teeth let go. The awful rippling in the water faded, and then vanished altogether. All that was left was the quiet darkness of the water and the gentle ebb and swell of the waves.

_Swim for the surface._

Ruby wanted to gasp in shock. There was a voice. A voice in her mind. It wasn't like when Jill or any other member of her family used mind-speech to talk to her, more like a voice had risen up from deep inside her soul to tell her what to do.

She didn't even think, but obeyed it without question. In a few minutes she broke the surface of the waves, gasping. Even though she had been able to breathe under the water it was still an enormous relief to be up in the open air again. After a few minutes in which she treaded water and tried to wipe the salty water from her eyes, Ruby looked around and was immediately stunned.

Somehow she'd been carried almost all the way back to shore. She was just at the edge of the harbor. As she treaded water the waves carried her back through the harbor mouth and into the calmer waters beyond. Soon she was close enough to swim. She stretched out for the dock and reached it in a matter of minutes. When she pulled herself out of the water she was surprised to notice that her clothes were dry – before she remembered that Jill had cast a spell on them.

Her old fear returned in a rush. Where was Jill? What had happened to her? Ruby scanned the darkened waves toward the horizon. There wasn't any sign of Jill there. Ruby knew what she had to do: she needed to go home and tell her parents what had happened as quickly as possible. She turned away from the dock and sprinted the short distance to her house. Every light was on inside.

Before she'd even open the door, Ruby's mother burst out and stared at her, wild-eyed.

"Ruby!" she exclaimed before running forward to grasp her daughter in a warm, tight, hug.

In spite of the situation, Ruby was unsure why her mother was so worried. She couldn't know anything about what had happened yet – could she?

"Jill got back hours ago. She told us she'd lost you! In the open ocean!"

"What?" Ruby spluttered. "I'm fine Mom." Then she caught up to what her mother had said. _Jill got back hours ago._ "That's impossible, I haven't been gone hours. Maybe one hour at most."

Nita's face changed from a look of relief to what seemed to be a look of worry – except there was something more behind it, Ruby thought. Something she couldn't name.

"No darling, that's impossible. Look." Nita pointed to the sky behind the house.

Ruby turned around to see. The sky was blooming blood red. It was dawn.


	3. Living Words

**Look at Me**

_By Atila_

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**Chapter Two – Living Words**

Ruby's mother insisted on keeping her home from school the next day. She spent till noon, probably because she had been up all night. When she finally awoke most of her family acted overly cautious around her. They all seemed astonished that she was alive. Ruby overheard her mother and father discussing what had happened through the wall of her room, which was next to theirs.

"Kit! Jill said they were around five miles off shore! And there definitely wasn't some sort of homing Wizardry attached to that spell Jill put on her: I checked. Ruby still had it in when she went to bed and-"

Nita's voice was cut off by her husband's interjection. "Nita, the powers said they'd fixed it all. Surely that's enough for you? You're not still worried?"

Her mother's voice was shaking. "Worried? I've always been worried. Ever since Tom told us there was something off about Ruby's energy fields I've been worried. And now," Ruby was surprised to hear her mother give a small sob, "this is just like proof, isn't it?"

"So you wish she'd drowned? That would make you worry less?" Kit's voice was wry.

"No!" Nita exclaimed. "I wish that we'd gone out and found her ourselves. But if-"

At that point Ruby couldn't bear to hear anymore. Her parents thought there was something wrong with her, and that hurt. But at the same time, she couldn't see what the big deal was. Even if there was something different about her personal energy field – whatever that meant – it had saved her life, hadn't it? That didn't seem like such a bad thing. Her only comfort was that from what she'd heard her father seemed to agree with her.

Throughout the day nearly everyone in her family continued to act skittishly around her. Even her older brother Daniel who wasn't even a Wizard seemed slightly nervous around her. At last, desperate to escape the tension permeating through her household, Ruby volunteered to take their dog, Cleo, for a walk.

Cleo – or Cleopatra – was a black lab. She was also the only member of Ruby's family that didn't flinch at the sight of her, in spite of the fact that Ruby was sure she knew what was wrong. This comforted her somewhat, and she wished passionately that she could speak to the dog.

Instead they walked together in a companionable silence to the park where Ruby let her off the leash. Cleo bounced excitedly while Ruby found a stick and threw it. Then Cleo tore after it. It was a windy night and the stick had been carried farther than it usually would have gone.

As Ruby threw the stick again she noticed something strange: the wind seemed to be curling around her ears forming a tiny whirlpool of air. And there were sounds in it, strange sounds she couldn't understand but could at the same time. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Cleo came racing back to her, the stick hanging out from either side of her widely grinning mouth. Ruby wrestled with her for a minute before Cleo gave up the stick, then threw it again.

Now there were actual words distinguishable within the sounds the wind was making. _In life's name and for life's sake…_

Ruby froze. She knew what this was. In addition to her parents and their friends many stories about the Wizard's Oath, Jill had also told her about it in great detail.

Is this it? Is this my chance to become a wizard? Ruby thought, suddenly elated. Slowly she repeated the sounds the wind made.

"In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so -- till Universe's end."

When she finished her voice was soft, almost awed sounding. And she _was_ awed by the deep silence around her, but the way the entire universe seemed to be listening with bated breath. Ruby remembered her mother describing that silence, the one that took hold when you spoke a spell, to her when she was little. Even better, she remembered experiencing it on those rare occasions when someone in her family did a spell around her.

Am I a wizard now? She wondered, and then shook her head. She was being foolish to expect something to happen immediately. Her Aunt Dairine had told her and her cousins many times about her Ordeal. Ruby remembered that it had taken at least a day for anything remotely magical to happen. The story of her mother and father's ordeal was much the same except that it had taken them even longer. She called Cleo in. Saying the Wizards Oath had made her feel somehow tired, and besides it was getting late. Cleo came, reluctantly, and the two of them started home together.

Nita met them at the door. "You're late! Well never mind. Your Aunts, Uncles and cousins are coming over for dinner tonight so we'll be eating in the dining room in thirty minutes. Hurry and wash up!"

Ruby grumbled internally: she didn't feel like having company over. After the strangeness of the past two days all she wanted to do was go somewhere quiet she could think it all over and try to figure out what it all meant.

Her mother was peering at her closely. "You're looking a bit hot. Are you feeling okay darling?"

Ruby was about to say that she was fine before she realized that if she did it would be a downright lie. She shook her head.

"Why don't you go upstairs and lie down? If you're feeling better later you can come down and eat something. We'll save some food for you." To Ruby's slight surprise, Nita hugged her hard before letting her go upstairs.

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_Please Review if you're reading. _


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